Crude Awakening

The Ocean Futures Society's team and I have been onsite at the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, but with heavy hearts we have to return to Santa Barbara, California. With your help though, we will go back.

This spill will be a tragedy of massive proportions for decades to come for the ocean and our global environment and especially for the people and wildlife of the Gulf coast.

The OFS team had a chance to see this tragedy up close and from under water. Diving more than 30 miles off the Louisiana coast, they were the first divers to see oil as far as the eye could see. Updates and footage are on our website and being aired on CNN, ABC Nightly News, and CBS Evening News, with requests for coverage from Discovery Channel and Associated Press.

There is more to report and we will go back. This epic event has only just begun and our team will stay involved. In the meantime, we must work on all fronts at once: supporting all efforts to cap the leak, identifying the most effective ways to prevent more oil from reaching the fragile ecosystems and fisheries of the coastal communities, mitigating the harm from the oil and the toxic chemical dispersants, and providing support for the people whose livelihoods have been devastated. Even after the oil stops gushing, funding must continue to be put into place to deal with the tragedy.

With your help we will document this disaster, delivering images, expert opinions, and coverage to the global public. We will seek to identify and promote the solutions that the people of the coastal communities need today.

We cannot change what has taken place, but we can make a difference and we must learn from it.

The Ocean Futures Society team would like to thank all of our OFS members, social networking fans and local Louisiana friends who have not only followed us in the field but who have opened their homes, hearts and their wallets. We would also like to thank St. Bernard's Parish, Plaquemines Parish, Rivers End Outfitters, Cajun Encounters, Venice Outdoors and many other people who helped us.

I assure you that I will not give up on my lifelong dedication, devoting myself and my team to tirelessly protecting the ocean, both at the grassroots level and at the highest echelons of government and business. We will continue to energize alliances for positive change, finding solutions that will make a difference for decades to come.

Thank you for supporting Ocean Futures Society so that we can continue to turn the tide, to make a difference, to expand our efforts of protecting the ocean to improve the quality of life on our only home, blue planet, Ocean.